Before You Fall In Love With This Movie: A Look At ‘Before I Fall’
Hannah Lee ’20 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer
Many YA Contemporary fans have been buzzing about the Before I Fall book-to-movie adaptation for months. The book was released in 2010 and won the Goodreads Best Young Adult Fiction Novel award that same year. The story involves four girls who resemble your stereotypical “mean girls.” According to them, they’ve lived their adolescence correctly: “Kissed the hottest boys. Went to the sickest parties.” This book focuses on one girl in the group named Sammy, who is played by Zoey Deutch in the movie adaptation. After a car crash, she wakes up to live the same day over and over again. She dedicates these days to solving the puzzle of this tedious daily routine. It’s the book that will leave you with regrets and a desire to do better within your own life. The movie leaves you with the same exact feeling. It is guaranteed that you will yell “YOLO” as you walk out of the theater and give a stranger a hug.
Book-to-movie adaptations are usually known to neglect important details or tend to stray away from the storyline. However, this movie followed the storyline quite well. It is as if one was reading the book and watching it at the same time. Of course, like any other movies, scenes need to be cut to keep the movie at a reasonable time limit. They cut out only the unnecessary scenes, which lets the viewer understand what is important to the story. Many people who watched the movie and liked the book agree that they only included what was necessary and it ended up working. The best part of the movie was how similar it was to the book.
One thing that bothered many fans was how Sammy’s relationship with Rob, who is played by Kian Lawley, seemed perfect right from the beginning. In the novel, Sammy crushes on Rob for a long time. She explains that she crushed on him in secondary school, but Rob didn’t think she was cool enough to be with him. Then, Sammy became friends with Lindsay, a relationship which led to Sammy become popular and so-called “cool.” Rob and Sammy start dating the fall of their senior year, which is set in the book. Despite her long pining and her relationship with him, she doubts their relationship at times. She gets disappointed when she gets notes that say “luv ya” instead of “I love you” and this was not expressed in the movie. Many of Sammy’s doubts are also not expressed in the movie. There are moments in the book when Sammy doubts her nasty actions towards others. In fact, many readers did not like Sammy as a character because she would feel bad about her malicious actions and yet continue to act that way because everyone else was doing it. If this was seen in the movie, the character development would have been more prominent.
Four out of five stars is given for the adaptation. Watch it for yourself and solve the mystery of life (or death) alongside Sammy. You might come out of the theater with regrets, but seeing the movie won’t be one of them.